Want to recover data from corrupt SD card

[itm]

I have an SD card from a Canon camera which seems to be corrupted. The camera reports "card error", and Windows (7 and 8) will assign a drive letter to the device if I connect it using a USB/SD adapter, but cannot read the partition (if I click on the drive letter in Explorer I get a "Please insert a disk into Removable Disk (G message. I also get a "Do you want to format this disk" message pop up when I connect the USB/SD device.

If I try to access the G: drive from a command prompt I get the message: "the device is not ready"

I've tried both TestDisk and Recuva, but neither are able to access the G: drive. Can anyone suggest any other way that I might be able to recover data from it?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, itm.

Well, basically you could try some other data recovery programs like the ones from this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html and the ones from that article: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm. Or if the files are really valuable to you, you could go directly for a data recovery company.

Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[itm]

Thanks for the recommendation. I've now tried 4 of the recommended utilities from the list. The problem is that none of them will "see" the SD card. While the USB/SD card adapter is detected as a device, the SD card is not. If I plug the card into the SD card slot of my laptop it does not show up in Windows Explorer or Disk Manager at all (even though I hear an audible tone when I insert it, and continue to hear audible tones every 30 seconds while it's inserted.

So it seems that if Windows can't detect it then none of the Windows utilities will be able to detect it either
????

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well, unfortunately, it sounds like the memory card might be failing. I guess you could try accessing it via a different card reader, but if you keep experiencing the same problems and if it's not recognized by the computer, just as you've mentioned, you won't have any luck with data recovery software as well. If this is the case, you might have to go for a data recovery company. 🙁